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Do you reckon this'd be much cop? The wife and I are thinking of doing this within the next 100 years. I see the following goods and bads:

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You're your own boss
Could potentially make big bucks
Chance to be creative and see £££ as a direct result
I like the service industry

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Dependent (to a certain extent) on things outwith your control i.e. weather, local planning, general industry trends etc.
Could get nutjobs staying
Not much free time
Fair amount of capital required to start with

washing, cleaning, cooking, being constantly cheery and welcoming - you'd have to be a total people person and have the kind of relationship where you could work together, I really don't think me and mr S could we're too different in our working methods/stress levels.

but once you were set up enough to get some staff in it'd be good fun. And, if it all went wrong you could get the lovely Polizzi in

Big bucks is probably pushing it no?
You WILL get nutjobs staying.
It's not for me, if I was going to go service industry I'd run a pub because at least you can tell everyone to fuck off at the end of the evening.

if we can successfully market ourselves to wealthy americans and europeans (especially russians), we should be fine. The Highlands 'experience' is massive to them folk. I'll just get a few pet red grouse which i'll let them shoot for £5k a day.

but we know a couple who've had a guest house in Edinburgh for a relatively short space of time and they've certainly raked it in. They're very good at what they do, and they work hard, but that's the encouraging thing about it - it's kind of up to you how much you make of it. This has what has got us thinking...

You can take holidays; you just can't make money whilst doing it and obviously have to plan in advance.

You also need to be on hand in the evening, or at least have some way of people finding you, if people are looking for a last minute booking. You can go out but it's much easier if you're in a small one pub village so anyone looking for accomodation will look in there and get pointed in your direction (assuming that's where you've gone for the night obviously!)

The capital is the main thing but if you do buy an existing bed and breakfast there'll at least be people already looking to stay there to help you start to get business.

in so far as that he was already comfortably off at the point he started running it, he'd bought the B & B by selling his existing house and didn't have any mortgage repayments or debts and, although he was open most of the year, he was in a position where he could afford to pick and choose a bit with how much business he took and when.

It's probably quite different if you're running it with your livelihood depending on its success.

back. He's really sharp on finance, but was owed a million quid to the bank at one point. He managed to turn it around though and appears to be doing very well now. He did take the somewhat risky move of opening a second business (a restaurant) at the height of the recession.

I loved the man who owned a B&B in Norfolk (The Olde Forge?) who was utterly outraged that anyone had criticised his business in any way. As a couple, they appeared to hate people in general so it seems perplexing that they'd chosen to work in hospitality for over 40 years!